There are two takes on politics. One, espoused by the late Tony Benn, is that it’s the issues that matter. And then there are the rest of us who think that the issues are of course terribly important but it’s the personalities that count. And for us, Dominic Cummings is the gift that keeps on giving.
The PM’s former adviser has surfaced in an interview in the New York Magazine with Tanya Gold. There we learn that Cummings’s work is still unfinished. His project, to see off Boris and Carrie, is ongoing. “It is,” he observes, “an unpleasant but necessary job. It’s sort of like fixing the drains.”
This may strike the PM as the worst news of a very bad few days, but for everyone else it’s enormously cheering. Just as Boris seemed to have put the worst behind him, he, and we, learn that Dom is still on his case, and this after a succession of devastating leaks about parties that may just have emanated from his former Svengali. It probably didn’t help that one of them may have been thrown by his nemesis, Carrie Johnson, after his departure. There’s more to come... yippee.
Here’s how Dom likes to refer to the Prime Minister: “I was sitting in No 10 with Boris,” he recalled, “and the complete f***kwit is just babbling on about, ‘Will Big Ben bong for Brexit on January 31?’” There are of course issues of principle here — Dom doesn’t think Boris is fit to govern and is obsessed with the question of whether people will be raising statues to him, like a Roman emperor, after he’s gone (they won’t) — but it’s the element of hatred that makes it all so riveting.
From the point of view of us spectators, sitting with our popcorn waiting for the next instalment, the fun bit is that Dom’s real animus seems to be reserved for Carrie, who saw him off from his job. “She thinks that she understands a whole bunch of things about politics and communications and whatnot,” he observed. “She doesn’t.”
Plainly this is true. But it also gives the entire show the compelling aspect of a revenge drama. Carrie v Dominic is an altogether more interesting element of the show than Boris’s notorious unwillingness to concentrate on policy.
This, folks, is what we really mean when we say that the personal is political. Thank you, Dominic... the man who keeps British politics interesting.
